“I stole the idea from George Washington,” admits Bill Owens, the Northern California brewer credited with popularizing pumpkin ale. Historians tell us that our first President was a beer enthusiast, and that he brewed ale from gourds. Now, 250 years later, pumpkin beers are an annual American rite and a sudsy segue into autumn. Pair them with a few of the cheeses they like and there’s your debate-night platter.

Innovation isn’t a word I associate with Basque cheesemakers, but the sublime sheep’s-milk Arpea is reason to rethink that. Created about three years ago by the Fromagerie Agour, Arpea resembles no other Basque cheese I know. A small, semisoft disk from an area known almost exclusively for hard aged wheels, it represents new thinking in this tradition-bound region.

“For years, we’ve held our price down,” the cheesemaker told me. But he couldn’t hold the line any longer. The economics of aged sheep’s milk cheese was forcing him to bump up prices, and not by a little. What I didn’t understand, and what the cheesemaker convincingly explained, was why comparable wheels from Europe often cost much less.

You’re right. This is the same cheese pictured in last week’s Planet Cheese. But that was a teaser. I identified it then but didn’t describe it, and this is a cheese you want to know. Goat’s milk blues aren’t that common, and great ones like Persillé de Rambouillet are rarer still. Where has this cheese been all my life?

The annual Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January is equal parts delight and dread for me. While it’s energizing to see so many amazing cheeses and cheese people in one place, my appetite always peters out before the cheese does. It’s agonizing at the end of the day to look at gorgeous mountain wheels from some new Swiss affineur and think, “I just can’t.”

I know I’m late to this party, but I’m just learning how appealing a fine brandy can be with cheese. Not every cheese, of course, but many firm aged cheeses have roasted nut, caramel and brown-butter notes that complement the heady aromas in a brandy glass.

Watching prices for some cheeses top $40 a pound is making me anxious and cranky. I still buy them because it’s my business to taste them, but I worry that many people are being priced out of the experience of great cheese. Of course, a lot of people are priced out of luxury restaurants, too, but it just seems that fine cheese, such a fundamental foodstuff, should not be reserved for the one percent.

Not again. For the second time in a month, a cheese that I had requested for a class would be a no-show, the distributor informed me last week. The French producer had declined to ship any Couronne de Touraine, concerned that the goat cheese might be detained by the FDA. The issue? The ashed rind.

Preparing to teach a class on French cheeses recently, I began trying to round up a few favorites, including some of the impeccable cheeses from Pascal Beillevaire. Beillevaire is a highly regarded French affineur, with shops all over France. I have written glowingly about several of his cheeses in the past—gems like Secret du Couvent, Bleu du Bocage, Tomme Brulée and Vendéen Bichonée. Last summer, when I was in Paris for just a few days, I made a point to visit one of the Beillevaire shops

I’m vaguely aware that my husband, Doug, maintains a list of cheeses that go well with Cabernet Sauvignon. You might imagine that I would be the one with that list, but no, he’s the go-to source. He’s the winemaker, after all.